UK’s Labour Party Promises to Open 350 Banking Hubs if It Wins General Election

The UK’s General Election is getting closer, with only a few weeks left. However, candidates continue to run their campaigns in an attempt to attract as many votes as possible. The country’s Labour Party’s recent announcement reiterated that it will open 350 banking hubs across the country if it wins the upcoming election.

High Streets Have Been Reduced To Ghost Town Says Shadow Chancellor

The Labour Party said that the 350 banking hubs promised earlier in the campaign will be one of its top priorities if it wins the election. The project will take around five years, but the party claims that it intends to honor its pledge.

The party believes that the proposal would breathe new life back into the country’s high streets. Given the fact that the UK has been seeing headlines about banks shutting down branches for years now as digital banking became more popular, it comes as no surprise that the public has found this promise alluring.

Around 6,000 bank and building society branches have shut down over the past decade, specifically between 2015 and now. Not only that, but another 645 will shut down before the year ends, according to various banks’ plans.

Introducing the policy, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves noted that Britain’s high streets became ghost towns as a result of so many branch closures. Banks have shut down, and countless communities have turned into cash deserts.

Shared Banking Are Emerging, But More Are Needed

The UK citizens were not left completely cashless, however. The ATM network Link and the non-profit agency Cash Access UK have been collaborating with the nation’s Post Office to mitigate the issue by introducing shared banking hubs across the UK.

So far, Link has recommended around 132 hubs, and to date, Cash Access UK managed to deliver 56 of them. Another 76 are currently still in development. This shows that the UK’s society was not ready to go cashless just yet and that the need for physical money still very much exists.

Reeves said that she expects many more hubs to open in years to come and protect access to cash. At the same time, they will provide a welcome boost to high streets across the country.

As for the Labour Party, in addition to promising new hubs, it also promised to grant new powers to the country’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), allowing it to strengthen regulation to support Link and allow it to proactively source locations for new hubs.